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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23887828">Preserve a Memory</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/pseuds/Cornerofmadness'>Cornerofmadness</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Prodigal Son (TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Found Family, Gen, Mild Angst</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 15:42:44</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,079</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23887828</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/pseuds/Cornerofmadness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>For once he has time for breakfast but it stirs up bittersweet memories.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Preserve a Memory</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/gifts">vanillafluffy</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><b>Timeline/Spoilers</b> -- No spoilers</p><p> </p><p><b>Author’s Note</b> -- written for written for vanilla_fluffy  for the prompt of Prodigal Son, Malcolm Bright, The only thing he knows how to make for breakfast is ----. and for Get Your Words Out Yahtzee for the prompt 'sandy'</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>XXX</p><p>
  <i>I’ve always loved how food preserves a memory- Piolo Pascual</i>
</p><p>Malcolm rubbed his eyes, stumbling out of bed. He’d gotten four hours of sleep. That was cause for celebration. He didn’t have a case as much as he wished he did. Getting to talk to Dani, JT and Gil always got him out of his head, out of those dark thoughts. Maybe he’d show up at the precinct just in case. </p><p>After letting Sunshine out to stretch her wings – he really needed to get her a bigger cage – and after he’d done his morning ablutions, Malcolm contemplated his kitchen. He wasn’t a huge believer in breakfast. What most people didn’t get was his stomach was touchy. Okay they got that part but it was the idea that sometimes he needed to be awake for a good while before it was up to accepting food that flummoxed them. Whenever he said that, people would stare at him like maybe he had a head injury. But today breakfast might not be a bad idea. He tossed his pills in the air, one after the other, catching them in his mouth like peanuts. When someone took as many pills as he did, mixing it up, having fun with it, took out some of the depressive affects of knowing just how medicated one needed to be to make it through the day.</p><p>If he did eat breakfast, it was usually something he found on the way to work, maybe a breakfast burrito and more than occasionally the health nightmare that was a PopTart. His mother blamed the Arroyos for that one because it was in Gil’s kitchen he first came across them. But there was one thing that he did know how to make, sort of a twist on a traditional Filipino breakfast or so he’d been told. He couldn’t quite be sure. Naturally it was the Arroyos who had taught him that too and Malcolm couldn’t make breakfast from scratch – or as close as he got – without thinking of Jackie. These days he missed her horribly when he thought of her but was always grateful for the time he’d had with her. </p><p>He ran a little water in the sink and let Sunshine splash around in it while he poked around his kitchen to see if he could make breakfast. Finding what he needed, Malcolm set about making scrambled eggs ala Jackie and champorado, a chocolate rice pudding that she had learned to make from Gil’s father. Malcolm would never forget the week when he’d learned how to make it. They’d gone to Siesta Key to the beach house of one Mother’s friends who hadn’t run screaming from her. Mother had taken everyone, him, Ainsley, the Arroyos. She was content to sit on the balcony and read. Sand was nothing Jessica Whitly had much patience for.</p><p>He and Ainsley had raced all over the beach, running Jackie and Gil ragged. It had been amazing sand, pure white and soft,  nearly a hundred percent quartz which had fascinated his young mind. He’d been such a science geek. Malcolm dug frozen sushi rice out the freezer and heated it up. Technically for the champorado he should have made it from scratch but he wasn’t great at boiling rice because he didn’t have the patience for it. Once he got that started, he’d melt in the chocolate and sugar into it with a little milk.  He didn’t have coconut milk but at least his regular milk didn’t smell off. The champorado started, Malcolm cracked eggs, remembering Jackie’s hands on his as she showed him how to do it right.</p><p>They had trailed into the Siesta Key home’s kitchen one morning  after an early play session in the surf, their toes sandy, making Mother nuts. Jackie had just laughed and Gil promised they’d sweep it all up. Jackie told his mother she’d make breakfast again because honestly who else would have? He wasn’t sure his mother even knew what a spatula was. Shocking everyone, Malcolm had wanted to learn. His mother had looked at him like he’d grown a new head but she let him do it while she cleaned up Ainsley’s sandy legs and feet. </p><p>Jackie had helped him break the eggs so not to get shells in the dish, something he sometimes still struggled with. She’d said anyone could just scramble an egg but it took a little extra to make them really stand out. He followed her every instruction by rote after all these years. Pepper, a little salt and good cream into the eggs and whipped them good. Butter in the pan and he minced some garlic into it. The smell took him right back to Jackie’s kitchen. He could picture her as clear as if she stood next to him, her hands on his as she guided him on his first attempts to learn to cook. Gil had watched them, leaning on the fridge. Gil was a fantastic cook himself but he let Jackie have this bonding moment.</p><p>Malcolm swore he could smell Jackie’s perfume as he took shredded cheddar out of the fridge. He poured the eggs onto the browning, fragrant garlic, giving them a good scramble before dumping in a handful of cheese. He cooked them to just past the soft, runny stage, stopping before they got too hard and slid them onto a plate. He hit them with a dash of hot sauce, less than Jackie or Gil would have used but enough to wake up his tongue.</p><p>Shooing Sunshine off the kitchen island, Malcolm sat down and ate his eggs happily lost in the Florida Keys if only in his mind. What he wouldn’t give for one more summer with Jackie there, being a second mom, the mom who would run on the beach and show him how to cook. He only nibbled a little of the champorado before ladling it all into a big container and tucking it, along with a can of sweet condensed milk to pour on top,  into a thermal bag. He’d take it to Gil. He knew it would brighten his day. Dani and JT might like it. He bet Dani liked chocolate and suspected JT wasn’t that picky about food. Most military men learned to eat just about anything.</p><p>Malcolm put Sunshine back in her cage, gathered up his breakfast offering and headed for the precinct. For once, he was feeling good. This was going to be a great day.</p>
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